internet at work

[400bhp]

I think for many companies, their attitudes are really archaic in terms of internet access. Its not dissimilar to trying to control thought.

I wekcome small amounts of downtime and will use the internet often in that time. Or I may actually go and talk to people, or go and do something that doesnt involve work. All you are really doing is blocking a form of communication and relaxation which will hit (at the bottom line) hit productivity.

 

[shouldbeinbed]

I need to find parts for a fairly old customised imported car with rather oversized lights at the front.*
So I googled 'middle-aged escort with large headlamps, Brazilian'*

*No I didn't

*I was looking for something to make my **Defy1 stand out from the little tinkly bells on a protest ride so I thought the old bulb horns would sound distinctive. The trouble I got into for typing Giant Hooters into the works intranet.

*neither did I

**I haven't got one really

 

[DCLane]

At my university there's open access but it's monitored. So students (and staff) accessing porn, etc. would be identified.

However, there's also unrestricted public wi-fi - and how they'd know which people download/access is unclear.

 

[Brains]

Mines open, but then i work in IT, we tell our staff to be sensible, some sites are blocked but we're talking hard core pr0n etc.

If everyone checks their company handbook they may find something they don't like about their IT policy, what is normally standard nowadays is the line "users should have no expectation of privacy"
what does this mean however?
simply put, your IT department can see everything you do on your computer, up to and including bank details, passwords and whatever you type in.
99.999999999999% of the time there's no reason to look a this stuff mind and it would be unprofessional to go rooting through someones stuff but on rare occasions it is requested by HR. (although we've not had a request for bank details or passwords ever)
if you're sensible with your staff they'll generally be sensible back.

Same with my company
37 sites, over 1,000 employees
We know what sites people are looking at, but people in IT, like HR, know to keep their mouths shut.
If you take the p1ss then IT will put in restrictions, just for you

So far we have blocked Facebook for one department between 9.30 and 5.30.and blocked a certain video channel for another department, mostly because they were downloading silly amounts of data and clogging the system.
We also blocked a well known on line betting site, but were forced by the directors to unblock it ! As they could not get their bets on the Derby!

 

[Melonfish]

Same with my company
37 sites, over 1,000 employees
We know what sites people are looking at, but people in IT, like HR, know to keep their mouths shut.
If you take the p1ss then IT will put in restrictions, just for you

So far we have blocked Facebook for one department between 9.30 and 5.30.and blocked a certain video channel for another department, mostly because they were downloading silly amounts of data and clogging the system.
We also blocked a well known on line betting site, but were forced by the directors to unblock it ! As they could not get their bets on the Derby!

Directors are a law unto themselves though, we all know that

 

[Dan B]

measured time on Autocad dropped by 30%. It wasn't me who measured it, and I had no say in the decisions. I was just one of the guys working away at a computer. Being as I am not stupid, I saw an obvious lesson

Well, perhaps I am stupid then, because this looks far from obvious to me.

 

[MikeG]

Well, perhaps I am stupid then, because this looks far from obvious to me.

How can this not be obvious, Dan?

An office which had worked at X rate for at least 3 years with the internet only available on 2 stand-alone stations, dropped to working at 70% of X immediately after the internet was provided to all individual terminals. This amounted to roughly £200,000 worth of productivity drop-off (or extra cost) to the practice in a year, apparently. Oh, and it gets worse. Having told the staff that this is what was happening, and asking them to moderate their behaviour, nothing changed. So then, the Partners had to introduce changes such as monitoring all work stations, having screens facing outwards (so that everyone could see what was on the screen), and handing out disciplinary warnings. This led to staff mutterings and accusations of "Big Brother is Watching", and, the same stuff as I am reading on here ("treat us like adults") and so on. Giving everyone access to the internet had a deleterious effect on the atmosphere in the office, and cut productivity to the extent that some clients were let down, leading to jobs that were expected to come into the office being given to other practices, and ultimately some staff cuts were made. All as a direct result of the one and only change that was made: the introduction of the internet to every terminal.

Clearly employees on here think that being able to go on the internet on their employer's time is a human right, but we're not hearing from employers about how much they enjoy paying for staff to surf the net when they should be working.

Before we get repetitions of the silly comments about battery chickens and monitoring time on the toilet, just slow down and read carefully. This was a happy, harmonious, unpressured, productive, professional working environment which was radically altered for the worse ONLY by the introduction of the internet.

I know all this because I went to the Partners of this practice a short while ago to get advice about taking over the practice near me that I mentioned in my first post. They gave this as their number one piece of advice regarding the operations of the drawing office: have the internet on stand alone stations, not at work stations.

Mike

 

[Archie_tect]

Life has moved on and you have to allow everyone access to information Mike... otherwise your staff will be queuing to get access to technical information and manufacturers' websites and then have to download/ copy that information onto their own workstations... you can't limit internet access in an architectural office if you want productivity- but you can limit certain sites from the server as the administrator if it is abused.

 

[Pale Rider]

Life has moved on and you have to allow everyone access to information Mike... otherwise your staff will be queuing to get access to technical information and manufacturers' websites and then have to download/ copy that information onto their own workstations... you can't limit internet access in an architectural office if you want productivity- but you can limit certain sites from the server as the administrator if it is abused.

Makes sense, presumably from a man who knows the trade.

I know whose office I would rather work in.

 

[CopperBrompton]

This was a happy, harmonious, unpressured, productive, professional working environment

The scary thing is that you really believe this.

Are you happy in your work? Would you bunk off 30% of the time for no reason, just because the opportunity has arisen?

 

[Dan B]

How can this not be obvious, Dan?

Well, on the face of it (and very quickly, because I am in fact at work ;-) in your previous posts

- it conflates "hours worked" with "results achieved", which is notoriously dodgy in any kind of knowledge work.
- it doesn't account for the effect of novelty
- it runs counter to the experience of most other contributors to the thread

Now, your longer post (the one I['m now replying to) does go into a bit more detail, so thanks for that. And I'm not questioning that it happened as you describe in that situation. But I think you really have to ask how generally applicable that story is and exactly how "happy and harmonious" or "professional" a workplace can be if it sees that kind of productivity dropoff just from bringing the internet to peoples' desks. It's words and pictures delivered by the medium of a computer, for goodness' sake, it's not Class A drugs.

Every so often when I'm really stuck I go to a cafe or a coffee shop to "get some work done" without the distraction of the internet: usually I get about 30 minutes into a task and then find I need to look something up that I don't know, and the resulting faffage with coffee shop lobotomized wifi or with slow 3G connections ends up taking longer than I would have saved if I hadn't decided to deny myself cyclechat.

 

[MikeG]

Life has moved on and you have to allow everyone access to information Mike... otherwise your staff will be queuing to get access to technical information and manufacturers' websites and then have to download/ copy that information onto their own workstations... you can't limit internet access in an architectural office if you want productivity- but you can limit certain sites from the server as the administrator if it is abused.

I understand this, and the reason why the internet was provided to individual terminals in the first place was to enable people to look up manufacturers' details and technical information etc. It's just that that isn't how they (we) used it in the main. The office I am looking to take over has 4 employees, and will probably have no more than 5, ever. To have 1 terminal for internet stuff shared amongst 5 is not unreasonable, in my view, for work-related uses. It is a design-office rather than a place churning out working drawings to other people's design, as the previous office was, so people will spend more time with a soft pencil sketching than they will trying to find rain-screen details or the like on the internet.

 

[MikeG]

Well, on the face of it (and very quickly, because I am in fact at work ;-) in your previous posts

- it conflates "hours worked" with "results achieved", which is notoriously dodgy in any kind of knowledge work. .......

If it does conflate hours with results then that is my fault for not making things clearer. This was not only measured time, but roughly measured output in terms of quantity of issued drawings. However, the big deal is the number of drawings which were issued outside the pre-agreed programme, and that leapt. We're talking about Design & Build commercial jobs with architectural fees running at £1m plus, and clients like that don't take kindly to having hundreds of people standing around idle on site because their drawings are late.

As to the effects of the novel: well, the data they showed me made it obvious that there was such an effect, but the losses I referred to (30%) were over a full working year.

 

[Archie_tect]

If you can get 4 [or even 5] people in your adoptive office to generate £660,000 fees p.a. [£200K = 30% lost production] churning out non-technical information [without running projects from inception to completion on site, without referring to guidance, solely using soft pencils on paper, separating 'design' completely from the building management process and without referring to PDF on-screen information or using Archicad or Revit software or downloading dwg files] then you must have a 1980's time-warp machine... I haven't worked that way since 1984, though I always prefer to sketch out and imagine and draft ideas in 3D, I'm skeptical it can be done in isolation any more, especially by any one you employ who's under 30!

 

[MikeG]

You're confusing 2 different offices.

The figures I have been quoting were from a practice where I was an employee, 7 or 8 years ago. The small office I am planning on taking over I have given no figures for at all, other than the number of employees.